LCA XIII: a conference on sustainability

Just a few days ago, I returned from Orlando, Florida where this year's Life Cycle Assessment conference, LCA XIII, was held. Life cycle assessment is an internationally standardized scientific method used to measure the environmental impacts of products and services throughout their life cycle. What this basically boils down to is that I got to hang out with brilliant sustainability geeks for three days in a subtropical climate with a Disney theme park nearby. Oh, and don't forget the hotel, modeled after the port city of Portofino, Italy:

Conference hotel, modeled after the port village of Portofino, Italy.

This was my first academic conference as a newly minted PhD and one of the first where I really felt like an independent researcher, at least within my area of expertise (land use of biofuels, industrial ecology, and GIS). For my talk, I presented work from my dissertation on producing renewable energy on marginal and contaminated lands. The audience was great and offered some interesting suggestions that could enhance the feasibility of the project's outcomes.

I also attended a wide variety of other talks, which included discussions of eco-effiency from an industry perspective, various methods for modeling recycling, many talks on food and agriculture since I am currently involved with modeling biofuel feedstocks, and an entire block of presentations on land use and ecosystem services, one of my favorite areas of research. I also had the opportunity to attend talks by at least five of my former Pittsburgh peers, all of whom are now finishing their PhDs or have already continued on to post-docs, professorships, and corporate consulting. What an impressive group we had!

Now that the conference is over, I am organizing all my notes and new contacts, but more importantly am spending time with family back home in Philadelphia. I fly to Germany on Thursday, and no matter how long the stay, time back home always goes more quickly than expected. For now, I am enjoying as much American and Philadelphian culture as possible. It's good to be home.